In the present study under review, Owen M. Phelan argues that Charlemagne's Christian empire (the imperium christianum), constituted a society “whose most basic organizing principle was the sacramentum of baptism” (10), essentially a sacramental nexus incorporating religious, social, legal, and political relationships within a firm theological framework. Since Phelan uses the term sacramentum for baptism, he logically attempts to trace the nuances of the term employed by Roman classical writers, the writings of the Christian writers living during the Roman Empire as well as culling information from early medieval church fathers, who served as a bridge between the authors of Antiquity, and the Early Carolingian writers.
Phelan, utilizing Roman secular writers such as Varro, Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, Livy, and Suetonius, describes how they used the term sacramentum in various ways to unify society theologically, socially, legally, culturally, and militarily. He particularly signals out Tacitus's use of sacramentum as a military oath, which Phelan sees as binding soldiers together in a community, sharing a common cause, setting boundaries for personal relationships (loyalty to a single commander in the republican period or to the emperor during period of the Roman Empire). Phelan then turns to early Christian writers such as Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine who inherited the ideas of sacramentum from classical authors, but enhanced the nuances of the term by contributing a theological element. Phelan notes that Tertullian, for instance, in his writing Adversus Marcionem (Against Marcion), categorizes “baptism and the eucharist as sacramenta because they were at a most fundamental level pacts made with God, signs of the total allegiance to God which ordered the entire Christian community” (18–19).
Phelan continues to see this important development in the writings of later Church fathers such as Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville, and the Venerable Bede. Thus, for example, Phelan points out that Isidore of Seville in his Etymologies, used the word sacramentum as an organizing principal for communal relationships binding together legal and civil components in a contextual framework, drawn from Roman secular and ecclesiastical sources. But Isidore, as Phelan correctly points out, was not unaware of the application of secular sacramenta to theological rites such as baptism. According to Phelan, “for Isidore, baptism's theological significance was grounded in a legal understanding of testimony” (27).
Phelan continues with a discussion of the early Carolingian reformers as they attempted to utilize the centralizing tendencies of the sacramentum of baptism and structure a vision of a unified imperium christianum by absorbing and redefining earlier ideas of sacramenta, integrating them within an all embracing theological context, centrally focused on the sacramentum of baptism. To support this, Phelan turns to Charlemagne's edicts and letters as well as church councils, particularly the synod of Frankfort held in 794 and the writings of Alcuin of York, who placed great emphasis on baptism in his letters and liturgical writings, particularly his treatise promo paganus.
Most interesting to this reviewer was Phelan's emphasis on Alcuin's Liber de virtutibus et vitiis (Book on Virtues and Vices), written about 800 and addressed to Count Wido of the Brittany March, which not only reflects Alcuin's blueprint for the theological centrality of the imperium christianum, but is also highly representative of Alcuin's attempt to model the sacramentum of baptism on previous social, political, and legal notions of sacramenta, yet embraced and redefined them, integrating them into a firm theological network. Phelan then proceeds to demonstrate how later Carolingian writers had internalized these Alcuinian ideas. He cites especially the Liber manualis (Manual of Spirituality) of the aristocratic laywoman Dhuoda, circa 843, and Bishop Jonas of Orleans's, De institutione laicali (Instructions for Laymen) circa 828. Phelan points out in their treatises the importance of baptism as a principle of organization for the imperium christianum as well as bringing social, legal, and political relationships under the aegis of theology.
Yet, Phelan insists that the idea of the societal, organizational potential of the sacramentum of baptism, textually transmitted not only through the aforementioned manuals, but also documents such as Charlemagne's encyclical letter of 811–812, sermons, and prayerbooks, “testifies to Carolingian interest in the sacramentum of baptism as theologically coherent, conceptually simple, consistently applied, publicly available and politically constitutive” (93).
Finally, Phelan, carefully analyzing Notker the Stammerer's Gesta Karoli magni imperatoris (Deeds of the Emperor Charlemagne), written during the reign of Charles the Fat (839–888), suggests that the coordinating potential of the sacramentum of baptism failed to save the empire from dissolution because both Carolingians and outsiders “failed to coordinate properly the complementary theological, political, and social dimensions of baptism” (265). However, Phelan ends on a positive note when he discusses the binding potential of baptism for the future Christian communities of the emerging countries of western Europe.
In examining Phelan's study, certain defects become apparent. The author fails to mention the close affinity between the Benedictine monastic oath and the Carolingian oath of baptism, while recent studies on Carolingian “specula” indicate the importance of monastic ideals as a model of unification for the Carolingian imperium christianum, an issue that deserves to be properly investigated in future scholarship. It should also be mentioned that a proper sigla is lacking from the book, and inconsistences occur in primary source citations (see 236–237) The author also uses the outdated Patrologia Latina version of Jonas of Orleans's De institutione laicali, although Odile Dubreucq's recent critical edition in the series Sources chrétiennes has been available since 2012.
Despite some minor flaws, Owen Phelan has made an invaluable contribution to early Carolingian studies. He has convincingly argued the case for baptism as one of the most significant components in the proper ordering of the imperium christianum, and has opened an invaluable window into the minds of Early Carolingian reformers as they attempted to develop a theological and eschatological blueprint for the Early Carolingian empire of Charlemagne and his successors.
